


The Absence of Hate

by Queenoftheswamp



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 10:30:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11872470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queenoftheswamp/pseuds/Queenoftheswamp
Summary: There’s a lot he questions, every day, like: is Frank Reynolds his real father? Does he really love the waitress? If he does, why did he run away from her when she finally (finally) said yes? Why has he kept his distance from Dee for the past six months, when he knows she’s really the only person who really gets him, and the only person who will explain their confusing world to him?These questions, like so much else, are too many words for Charlie. Every time they come to him, he falls into a hole, effectively burying himself in words that he can’t even spell, never mind figure out the answers to the questions they form.





	The Absence of Hate

There aren’t a lot of things Charlie Kelly is sure of in this world.

He’s sure that huffing paint is the only thing that makes him feel better when his friends are a little too mean to him. He’s sure that his best friend Mac is gay, and is missing their friend Dennis more than the rest of them put together. He’s sure that Dennis must, absolutely regret leaving them all behind, because this is Philly and Philly is the greatest place in the world, and Dennis will never feel home anywhere else.

He’s sure that they’re all way too fucked up to ever fit in anywhere else in the world, and that they need each other just like they need their own stocked bar to drink out of every day.

There isn’t much else that he’s sure of, though.

Lately he’s been trying to figure out how he can be sure of things – how he can understand any of the things that have happened to him as of late. There’s a lot he questions, every day, like: is Frank Reynolds his real father? Does he really love the waitress? If he does, why did he run away from her when she finally (finally) said yes? Why has he kept his distance from Dee for the past six months, when he knows she’s really the only person who really gets him, and the only person who will explain their confusing world to him?

These questions, like so much else, are too many words for Charlie. Every time they come to him, he falls into a hole, effectively burying himself in words that he can’t even spell, never mind figure out the answers to the questions they form.

When Dennis left, even more questions started to emerge, and Charlie didn’t know how to quiet them, how to keep himself from exploding, from spilling his guts out to the three friends that were left behind. Sometimes a little bit would come out of him, usually at night after he’d finished his eleventh beer and was lying flat on his back next to Frank, staring at a cracked, water-stained ceiling. It was only then that he felt distant enough from his reality to feel comfortable examining it. Frank would either tell him to forget it all and go to sleep, handing over a second can of Purina, or would suggest Charlie find a different broad to pursue, because God only knows there were better out there than Deandra and the waitress.

Charlie would agree, of course never about the waitress – She’s the love of my life! And Dee’s a, uh, Bird! I don’t care what she thinks! – and Frank would seem satisfied by this response. Predictable, reliable responses were the way to go, though, because Frank wasn’t going to be able to answer his questions, not really. Even if Charlie hadn’t fantasized about holding the waitress’s hand for months, and only actually thought to call Dee a bird when other people were around to remind him of her status.

Of course, she had helped him figure that out, too. We’re good at this together.

It had been six months since he had any fantasy about the waitress, and he didn’t like it.

Charlie observed that, the longer the four of them spent without Dennis, the more reserved they all became (especially Mac). Without the constant insults and outrageous declarations of grandeur, they were all humbled, unsure of how to proceed when the glue that held them together dissolved. Without predictability, there seemed to be no stability. It seemed any one of them could vanish in a puff of smoke, and they weren’t sure how to proceed, fearing that anything they said or did would result in more change. And change was bad. Charlie didn’t do well with change.

Dee had been cleaning the same glass for fifteen minutes when Charlie startled himself out of his reverie. He watched from the other end of the bar as her eyes squinted up while she rubbed away infinitesimal spots, nose scrunched, lips tight. She was clearly avoiding looking at him, and her expression of concentration looked awfully forced. This happened every time they were left to their devices, ever since that dreaded Morning After – Is it cold in here? Frank had stolen away to drink a box of wine under a bridge with Artemis, and Mac had stumbled home in a drunken stupor. Dee herself hadn’t had a drink yet, and it was already 1pm. Charlie had been nursing the same Coors since he’d come in that day, his thoughts distracting him from his usual mission.

“Dee,” he sighed finally, propping himself up on the bar by his hand. Dee continued rubbing at the glass, shifting so he couldn’t see her face. “Deandra.”

“What? What is it?” She spun back around too quickly, a mess of blond hair spilling over her face. She brushed it off impatiently, setting the glass down on the counter with a soft bump.

“You’ve been cleaning that fucking glass for fifteen minutes,” he said, hoping he sounded the right amount of annoyed.

“So?”

“So, don’t you think it’s clean enough?”

She looked at him then looked at the glass in front of her, looking as if she had been woken up while sleep walking, and she’s trying to figure out why she isn’t in her own bed.

“Are you sure you’re the right person to be judging if something is clean enough, Charlie?” It’s forced, he realized. They’re both forcing themselves to be mad, to seem normal.

They lock eyes for too long and she turns away, groaning at the familiar look in Charlie’s eyes. The groan tells Charlie she hates this just as much as he does, and he relaxes. Maybe, while nothing makes sense, the two of them can be normal people for a while. Normal for them, at least.

(Because that worked out so well for them last time.) 

“He’s such an idiot. He and Mac both are.” She looks sad when she says this, and Charlie knows she loves her twin brother, even if she also hates him. He understands that familial love is often twisted with resentment. Especially when it comes to the Reynolds twins.

“Remember when they broke up? And Mac tried to take Frank’s toe knife?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“That was a fun night.”

“I don’t remember there being anything fun about having half a dozen cats trapped in my wall, Charlie.”

“I told you not to put a bird in. I know all about cats, Dee, and they don’t like birds.”

“You were the reason I had more than one cat in my wall!”

“Oh you’re so right! That was rad. Good times.” Charlie smiled fondly, remembering a night of Cheetos and cats and being allowed to hang out at Dee’s apartment for a while. Apparently they remembered the night differently.

“It absolutely w- you know what, never mind.” Dee ducked under the bar to grab a beer, shaking her head. Charlie suddenly recalled, yet again, one of the few times they ran the bar by themselves, and felt his stomach lurch unpleasantly. Did he still have indigestion from the cat food from last night?

“Hey Dee?”

“Yes?” Dee cracked open her beer on the countertop, immediately tilting her head back to down half of it. Charlie watched, fidgeting with his rag as her blond hair dropped gracefully behind her, her head tilting back as she swallowed the beer, baring her neck to him. This was her best trick, and the only one of them that could match her beer for beer was Charlie himself. He loved that about her. Dee was most attractive when she wasn’t showing off or putting on an act.

Their day together came back to his mind – the day he had helped her be herself for a while, rather than a character that she thought the guys would want her to be. He had undoubtedly been attracted to her then.

“Do you, uh, do you remember when you thought it was cold in here?” The question sounded stupid even to himself.

Dee swallowed thickly, some beer dribbling down her chin as she came back to life. She reached to wipe it away, eyes widening.

“What do you mean, do I remember a specific day when I felt cold?” She knocked her bottle back on the bar.

“Just, you know, when we got really, really into that def poetry – ” His eyes flickered briefly to her chest, and then he thought about punching himself when she caught the movement.

“-Uh, yes Charlie, I do remember.” They both froze up for a second, having just admitted to remembering their Night Which They Do Not Speak of. They both stood still, afraid something would shatter if they spoke or moved without careful consideration.

Smiling and laughing nervously, Charlie slapped his hands together, then shook his head violently for a second. Dee eyed his movements carefully. There was no way she was drunk enough for that conversation.

“Weird time! Anyway, Dennis’s baby is gonna be super fucked up, right?”

Dee looked at the opposite wall for a second as if she needed a second to think, bit her lip, then turned back with something like relief on her face.

“It’ll fit right in around here.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Things got both more and less weird, following a pattern (or lack of a pattern) that their lives had always followed. Mac started disappearing for long stretches of time – when Charlie and Dee started to worry, they followed him one night and found him browned out at the Rainbow down the road, sloppily making out with a guy with nice cheekbones who was relatively the same height as Dennis. They figured it was healthier than him moping in his empty apartment, and never broached the subject.

Frank remained unaffected by the whole business, his only move being to divide Dennis’s shares of the bar between Charlie and Dee, which they were more than happy about – on the condition that Charlie under no circumstances make a move to sell his shares without their guidance. Even if Dennis eventually came back, Frank said, tough titties, loyalty was important in business and apparently Dennis didn’t have it.

Charlie and Dee, being the only two without an escape from the business of filling the hole Dennis had left behind, found themselves growing closer (just because they were bored, they assured themselves). Charlie showed up at Dee’s apartment every couple of days, high as a kite with the expectation that she would feed him and put on a movie. Which, with minimal complaint, she did.

One Friday, Charlie surprised her, but not in the usual way.

“Want to order a pizza tonight? I can treat you.” He said it so casually, Dee almost forgot who she was talking to. He had been behaving so oddly around her, it was making her nervous – a casual touch to her back earlier had her jumping out of her skin, all electric and buzzing. He’d been touching her more often lately – of course she had noticed – and was starting to get concerned that he didn’t even realize the signals he was sending her way. If his behavior after their one night hookup had been any indication, Charlie would not feel good about allowing that to happen again.

They had been matching beers all night while waiting on the dozen-or-so customers who had come in. Fortunately, everyone had ordered a few drinks and the turn out hadn’t been terrible. Dee had messed up a few orders, but no one cared that much. Mostly the two of them had been occupied with measuring their responses to one another, and staring at each other when the other wasn’t looking.

“With what cash?” Dee hadn’t meant to be so blunt, and an embarrassed look stole across Charlie’s face for a second, then vanished.

“Dennis hasn’t been here to steal my tips, so I’m not doing too bad right now,” Charlie said, wiping some of the counter off with a dirty rag. “I could probably treat you to a slice, no big deal.”

“He steals yours too?”

“Yeah, everyone’s but Mac’s.”

“Fucking figures.”

“Does that mean you want pizza?”

Dee smiled, looking down at the dirty countertop in front of her. Maybe he did know what he was doing.

“Sure. I could eat pizza.”

At 1am they finished closing up, shooing the few drunks that remained out of the bar, and Charlie grabbed Dee’s hand, leading her out of the back entrance. Dee wasn’t sure if she’d ever held Charlie’s hand before, but was surprised at how not dirty it was. Lately he’d seemed…

Cleaner?

She tried to calm herself, half-drunk and holding hands with Charlie in the dark as he led her down some back alleyways – “shortcut”, he mumbled as she held back her questions – and eventually they stepped out of the alleys onto a side street, and from there Dee had no idea where Charlie brought her or how they arrived, but a dimly lit shop that was just labeled “Pizza” with an unlit I appeared in front of them, as if summoned by Charlie himself. Dee vaguely remembered driving by it before, but it looked out of business, never mind open past 1am.

“It’s closed, Charlie.”

“Just wait a sec.” Charlie led her to the door and knocked confidently. They waited a full minute – which felt like an eternity to Dee – and she opened her mouth to suggest they get Domino’s or something when the door cracked open, and a face appeared. A pair of brown eyes regarded them coolly.

“What do you want, Charlie?” the man said. 

“Dude, just like, pizza. Two slices.”

“That’s all?” he asked, sighing, and Dee briefly wondered what other services a run-down restaurant called “Pizza” could offer. “What kind?”

“Sausage!” Charlie ordered, fishing around in his pocket. Dee frowned when the door closed, but Charlie didn’t seem concerned. He pulled four dollars in ones out of his pocket, each bill crumpled up. He smoothed them out as best he could until the door opened again, and a brown hand was extended through a narrow crack, providing two triangle-shaped boxes. Charlie took them and placed the cash in the man’s hand.

“Thanks, man!” Charlie said as the door closed.

“No problem,” the guy mumbled from behind the door. Dee crossed her arms, but took the pizza box Charlie offered her. She smiled, just a little.

“How did you know he would have sausage? It’s not even open.”

“Tony owes me a favor,” Charlie said. “C’mon, wanna go eat this back at your place?”

Dee had to admit later that it was the best slice of cold pizza she’d had in a while. She and Charlie had a few more beers that night before passing out on opposite ends of her couch, legs tangled together, bathed in the blue light of a wrestling match Charlie had been very excited to watch. Dee slept better than she had since Dennis left.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

When Mac did bother coming to work that week, he was downright shitty to be around.

“I’m so fucking bored,” he said, leaning against the counter and rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. “Is it always this boring here?”

“You’ve been working here for a decade, Mac, what do you think,” Dee ground out as she wiped down tables. “If you’re that bored find something to clean or try to think of a way to draw in more customers.”

“That sounds even more boring. I think I’ll just get drunk instead.”

“Count me in, buddy,” Charlie said from his place under one of the tables. He’d been scraping away at gum for the better part of an hour. Mac filled two shot glasses with tequila, then rolled his eyes as Dee made a throat-noise that meant she also was in for a shot.

“I thought you were being productive today,” Mac said as he poured a third.

“Since when is anyone in this bar productive and sober at the same time”

“Fair point, one for the lady – well, one for the bird.” Dee stiffened, waiting for Charlie’s laugh to come. After a pause he chuckled lowly from his place on the floor, but it seemed off. Even Mac took notice and frowned at his friend.

Mac downed his shot instead of commenting, leaving Dee’s and Charlie’s on the counter. Charlie pushed himself off the floor, reaching the shots before Dee, then picked hers up and handed it over.

“Cheers,” he said, smiling and clinking his glass with hers. Dee half-smiled before she downed her shot, not bothering with the salt and lime. They locked eyes as the tequila burned down their throats, a familiar heat rising in each of them. Dee felt her heart speed up when Charlie’s smile grew warm. 

“Uh,” Mac broke their moment, scowling at the interaction he’d witnessed. “It’s just a tequila shot, guys, no need to get weird about it.”

“We weren’t – we weren’t getting weird,” Dee said, crossing her arms.

“What the fuck does that mean, man?”

“Never mind.” Charlie and Dee went back to their tasks, embarrassed, and Mac hummed to himself, glancing around the bar as if it were a new patron and not someone who practically lived there.

The next hour was silent. Mac took a couple more shots, complained about boredom, then eventually went out the door, and headed towards the Rainbow. Charlie and Dee avoided eye contact as they dealt with a handful of customers that night, each experiencing moments of giddiness and anxiety every time they were forced to interact. They both knew, from experience, that it was safer to avoid exploring those feelings.

They locked up early, and Dee declared she was going home to watch a much needed chick flick. Charlie elected to go get high in his apartment.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

A few hours later, Dee was the picture of contentment – and about as anxious as a turkey on Thanksgiving. She hadn’t invited Charlie over, but he’d behaved so strangely, and they hadn’t really said good night to each other. She couldn’t shake her jitters, much as she tried through beer and trashy media.

She was curled around a bowl of popcorn watching one of her favorite rom-coms, tall can of Narragansett in hand. She tried to keep herself from glancing at the door, or from staring at the heavy sheets of rain that fell across her window, the flames of half a dozen vanilla candles reflected in the glass. Snuggling deeper into her afghan, she stared determinedly at the screen while Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler pretended they didn’t want to fuck each other. She tried not to think too much about Katherine Heigl’s blonde hair and Gerard Butler’s scruffy beard, and how cute they looked together despite their opposite appearances.

“She’s not even that pretty,” Dee mumbled, more to distract herself than anything. She shoved popcorn into her mouth, drowning the mouthful in the remains of her fifth beer. She was totally not thinking about how Charlie hadn’t reacted properly when Mac called her a bird, or about how he’d been extra polite to her for the remainder of the night.

She also wasn’t thinking about how he’d brought up their night together all too recently, and how she’d been on edge ever since. Repression doesn’t really work when someone cites the very event you’re trying to repress, then makes moon eyes at you endlessly.

She especially wasn’t thinking about the warm smile he’d given her post-tequila shot.

A loud bump in the hallway sounded as soon as she’d swallowed the last of her beer. She would have been more alarmed if she hadn’t been straining herself for an hour to hear that exact sound.

Carefully arranging herself to appear surprised and disgruntled, Dee raised her empty beer can to her lips and waited. A soft “fuck” followed the bump, and then she knew.

As if on cue, her front door flew open, and a silver-nosed Charlie stumbled in, drenched and shivering. The serenity of Dee’s apartment was immediately broken, but her own anxiety lifted at the sight of her sopping wet friend standing in the doorway.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, a goofy grin spreading on his face. Dee fought back her own smirk and rolled her eyes instead.

“You’re soaked,” she said, nonchalantly turning back to her tv. Charlie made his way over to her, slipping his dirty sneakers off before crashing over the back of the couch onto the open spot next to her. She immediately inhaled, feeling both comforted and alarmed by the fact that the smell of spray paint mixed with Bacardi was no longer disgusting to her. “You’re going to ruin my couch, Charlie!” she said, because she was so annoyed that he was lounging next to her, and that giddy feeling from earlier absolutely had not returned.

“You love it,” he said, still grinning. He righted himself, sliding closer to her and putting his arm on the back of the couch behind her. “Otherwise your door would have been locked, Dee.”

She wondered why they had always dubbed him the stupid one. She pulled her afghan off, slipping out of Charlie’s half-cuddle, and made a beeline for the fridge. She dug out two more cans while Charlie started commenting on the movie, mostly nonsense that filled up the lonely apartment she lived in nicely. He almost knocked over a candle when he started gesturing, but it stayed upright. Apparently Charlie wasn’t a Gerard Butler fan.

When she settled back onto the couch, dangling the beer in front Charlie without another word, Charlie inhaled deeply and moved unnecessarily close to her to grab it.

“Y-you know,” Charlie hiccupped quietly, then blinked a couple of times, as if trying to sober himself up, “things haven’t been so bad lately, you know Dee?”

“They could be worse,” Dee managed to get out, eyes trying to focus on the very wet, very warm Charlie in front of her. He was practically in her lap, and she realized, with a flash of horror, that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her camisole top was tight, and Charlie brushed against her once, then turned red when he made the realization himself. He moved back about an inch, then continued his crossfaded rant, quickly moving in a different direction with it, unprompted by Dee who kept her eyes trained on the tv with something like determination on her face.

“It’s just… I’m not stupid, Dee, you know?! I knew the waitress wasn’t ever going to fall for me, I mean, she’s a classy lady, she doesn’t want to hear about the sewer or all the rat heads I bash in.” Dee snorted. This wasn’t the first time the waitress had come up recently. Sometimes she thought Charlie blacked out every conversation he had about her, then brought up the same complaints later because he couldn’t remember making them in the first place.

“But Charlie, she slept with you, and then you ran away from her. She gave you a shot and you didn’t take it.”

“Exactly!” Charlie took a big sip, eyes widening. “What is with that, what changed?” 

The question hung between them, heavy and difficult, and Dee realized where Charlie had gone with his rant. Was he telling her he didn’t love the waitress anymore? But that had to be wishful thinking on her part. Charlie had loved the waitress for half his life.

She realized, when he said change, that something definitely felt different, despite her misgivings. Her favorite part of the movie had come on – the part where the sexual tension between the characters becomes evident while they are salsa-dancing – and Charlie had stopped chattering to stare at her, waiting for an answer. He took the beer from her hand slowly, eyes trained to her face, although they were a little bloodshot, and his nose was still silver. But she remembered him cupping the back of her head while he kissed her, and they’d been on this same couch, and all at once she had realized something…

“What is it?” she tried to sound annoyed, then wondered why she kept pretending. Because it’s Charlie, and you’ll fuck things up even more if you don’t. “I don’t know what changed, why should I – ”

“Dee– ” Fuck, fuck, fuck, not this again. It was that voice, the one she’d thought of a thousand times – You’re calming me down. This is the exact reason why you haven’t been able to stand each other for six months, not again – and then he spoke, sounding unsure, but as if he had realized something very important: “I think I want to kiss you again.”

Dee felt the air catch in her throat. This was it. “You… you want to – ” Charlie nodded, sliding the tiniest bit closer. He swallowed, eyes trained to her face. Yeah, she realized, I’m not going to stop him.

There was a moment; his lips were almost as warm as his eyes, and although she objectively knew he smelled funny and was clumsy and some weird level of crossfaded that only he could achieve, he felt like home. He felt like a place she hadn’t been to in a long time, but had secretly missed, longed for, and felt broken without.

His hands were steady on her face as they moved together, beers and movie forgotten. She lifted her arms, embracing him carefully, something inside her swelling up, rising to the surface -

For the second time that evening, her door swung open.

They leapt apart as if they’d been electrocuted. Dee grabbed onto her beer as if reaching for a shield, and Charlie threw his arms up over his face. Dennis stared blearily at them from the door, eyes unfocused, clothes and hair severely rumpled. His cheeks looked hollow and his eyes had black around them, making him look gaunt and sickly. Dee instantly recognized the look, and almost immediately felt that familiar itch for crack, along with massive guilt, which didn’t make any sense.

“God damn it,” she said, a cocktail of guilt, anxiety, and drug cravings hitting her stomach. She wanted to throw up.

“Went home and… saw Mac, with Cheekbones? Or something,” Dennis looks almost apologetic as he gazes at his sister and friend, not aware enough to read their guilty expressions. So Dennis had met Cheekbones.

Wordlessly, Charlie and Dee stood up to guide Dennis to the couch, fleetingly glancing at each other over his hunched body. Charlie seemed oddly sober, although Dee didn’t know how he could be. There was no apology between them, only a temporary acceptance that a line had been crossed, again, but they could not verbalize it. Maybe ever.

They deposited Dennis on the couch, then waited a moment to see if he would give them any clues as to why he was back.

Dennis curled in on himself instead and fell into a deep sleep immediately, but not before he rattled on about “that whore”. As he came down from his high it was unclear if he was talking about the mother of his child or Mac, but he was annoyed, and before passing out asked Dee if she still had a stash in the apartment.

“Of course not,” she snapped, and Charlie, with his red eyes and frowning lips, stared at her curiously.

Once Dennis had fallen asleep, the silence felt too heavy, and both Charlie and Dee couldn’t figure out how to end the night. Charlie went to run a hand through his hair, but when he lifted his arm Dee winced, and then they both blinked stupidly at her misunderstanding.

“Well, guess I better be getting home,” Charlie said, not as firmly as he intended. Dee opened and closed her mouth, stared at him more, then nodded. He was withdrawing. Of course. She turned to walk towards her bedroom, not looking back or indicating that she cared one way or the other if he left or stayed. Charlie sighed as the door clicked behind her, sliding his wet sneakers back on over dirty socks. On his way out he glanced at Dee’s kitchen counter, and spotted a half-drank bottle of tequila poorly hidden behind the microwave. He swiped it without hesitating – something to keep him occupied on the walk home.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predictably, Charlie did not show up again. For a while Dee left her door unlocked, although she successfully convinced herself it was out of habit and not wishful thinking. Even so, for a while she was unsettled, because even without Charlie interrupting her evenings periodically, it still felt like he could appear without warning, or even worse, that he was nearby and she just couldn’t see him. She wanted to shake the ghost Charlie her mind had conjured up, but he had been her only companion for a stretch of time and now that things were normal, she was more or less alone. In her mind she was telling him he smelled bad and complaining about him chewing with his mouth open, but he was situated comfortably at Paddy’s with the guys, and she was at home in her slippers with a bottle of jaeger (her go-to Dee’s-going-through-something drink).

For a few days Dennis did stay on her couch, mopey as he was. She was relieved when he finally left – waking up to your twin brother calling you a dumb bitch because you didn’t go grocery shopping is an unpleasant way to wake up, and she’d had enough of that for the eighteen years they were forced to live together. Dennis moved back in with Mac under the condition that he was given notice every time Mac planned on bringing a man home, which was easy enough for Mac to agree on, since his steady flow of lays had ended as soon as Dennis had returned. Still, Dee thought this highly hypocritical and unfair, but Mac wasn’t even 100% out of the closet yet. He still thought it was his own secret; or, some days he did.

Dee was glad to have her brother back, but a familiar anxiety returned with him. Charlie didn’t even bother to check in with her via text, which was probably fair because she wasn’t exactly hitting him up either, but she still felt resentful when a week of silence passed. She showed up to Paddy’s exactly two times, and neither time he spoke to her, not even to call her a bird or a bitch or a whore. He just looked at his hands, his drink, everywhere but at her.

Dee remembered standing next to him when Dennis and Mac stepped outside, looking at him and waiting for something to be said. Charlie turned his back on her, rag in hand as he polished off the sticky shelves behind the bar. Dee did that thing where she opened and closed her mouth, trying to figure out how to speak through the wall that he was starting to build between them. She coughed, trying to get him to stop his fidgeting with the rag, but he seemed determined to ignore her. Why did things always go this way?

“Char – ”

“Charlie, check out this crawler I found in the bathroom! Have you seen one of these before?” Frank came hobbling out of the bathroom, a long, squirming bug in his hand, and immediately had Charlie’s full attention, something Dee had not been able to get for the entire week. So a bug took precedence over Dee now. Her expression hardened, and she watched as Charlie enthused over the bug with Frank. He glanced up a Dee, for just a second, and felt the ice of her glare before he shivered and turned away again.

She hadn’t been back since.

Dee let herself go through a minor depressive cycle, then decided self-care was a better way to go. She couldn’t let Mac and Dennis find out she was falling in love with Charlie. Because she wasn’t.

She just wished that he didn’t shut her out every time they bonded. Sure, the time after they slept together made sense – they were both freaked out – but they had been hanging out and having a great time recently, and this time it was just one kiss, and that shouldn’t have made him feel just as weird as the sex had. Or maybe she just wanted an excuse to blame him for fucking her up a second time.

A bubble bath and five glasses of wine later, she realized it had been ages since she had gotten laid, which probably put her behind everyone, Frank included. That made so much sense, when she really thought about it. Of course she wasn’t falling in love with Charlie, their relationship had just become increasingly more physical, and it was throwing her off because she wasn’t getting male attention elsewhere. She was known for lowering her standards when she was attention-starved.

The injustice of her loneliness was not lost on her, so robe-clad and rose-scented, she made the decision that she was extremely overdo for sex and hence had absolutely no reason to continue her accidental celibacy. She was only human, after all.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paddy’s Pub, 11:17am, Thursday

The dynamic had definitely shifted, but none of them seemed to realize it. Charlie was toting around his mop bucket aimlessly (he had already cleaned everything and was now out of things to do) and Mac and Dennis were both behind the bar, examining a bag of lemons Mac had brought in that day. They seemed to be figuring out a math problem and something just wasn’t adding up. Dennis snapped his fingers suddenly, drawing Mac’s attention. The latter was holding one of the lemons in his hand, concentrating on why it felt so strange to have purchased lemons for their bar. 

“That’s it! Dee’s been gone for a week now!” Dennis smirked, pleased that he had figured out why it felt weird that Mac had been the one to pick up lemons. Mac furrowed his brow.

“Are you sure? I could’ve sworn someone was squawking yesterday.” Both men laughed generously at this, and Charlie stared into his dirty mop bucket, swirling the mop around inside.

“She’s been gone for two weeks,” Charlie corrected, but neither of them paid him any attention. No, it has been one week, Charlie realized, confused. It felt like two. Why did it feel like two?

“Get chopping with those lemons, Mac, we’ll need them for Thirsty Thursday shenanigans.” Mac promptly began slicing lemons on a small plastic cutting board, and Charlie kicked his mop bucket aside, pulling himself up onto a bar stool to watch Mac do a “Dee task”, shaking off his weird feelings.

“She’s been doing that thing she sometimes does,” Dennis continued, “with the cake and the jaeger?”

“Ugh, it’s so gross when she gets like that. Smoking too?”

“Of course. Bad habits come in threes, I guess. It’s disgusting.”

“I thought you said you haven’t seen her,” Charlie said.

“This was like, a week ago. Anyway, I told her if she has any more of these episodes, she will be on track to becoming a fat ugly bird as opposed to an ugly bird.”

“Nice one dude,” Mac said.

“What’d she say?” Charlie said, not smiling.

“Well, she called me a dick and kicked me out of her house, but that’s beside the point. Gentlemen, when we see that bird again, she may resemble Fatty Magoo rather than the Aluminum Monster, and that’s going to hurt business. She’ll be a hybrid – Fatty Aluminum Monster.”

“Oh, no, dude, that sounds gross.” Mac held a lemon wedge up to his face for inspection. It was somewhat malformed, and a significant chunk had fallen out. He nodded his approval and threw it into the bucket.

“You see, Dee is not an attractive woman, and that – ”

At this, Charlie squinted his eyes, as if trying to see what Dennis saw.

“What is it, Charlie?” Dennis immediately became annoyed.

“I dunno, man,” Charlie said, folding his arms up and holding his elbows. He looked down at the counter. “I don’t know, maybe she isn’t super ugly. I don’t know why we always have to talk about this.”

“Excuse me?” Mac dropped his knife and was staring at Charlie with an incredulous expression.

“Yeah, I mean maybe it’s because I haven’t seen her, iunno, I just think, I mean yeah she’s a bird, but birds are kind of nice, ya get me? And anyway, she isn’t even here, why do we have to talk about her like that?”

“I absolutely do not get you,” Dennis sputtered, so alarmed that someone had told him that his sister was not, in fact, hideous that he could do nothing but glare and stammer out objections. Mac whistled, then pulled away from the conversation, as if too appalled to go any further.

“Maybe it’s a fluke, just a thought I had,” Charlie scooched off the stool, determined to not completely retract what he’d said, and made his way behind the bar to grab a beer.

“Well, un-think it,” Dennis finally responded, reaching to get his own beer. “We all agreed a long time ago that Dee is an ugly bird, and we are absolutely keeping it that way. Have I made myself clear?”

Charlie stared at him in amazement as he popped the cap off his beer, taking a long pull from it while he regarded his longtime friend.

“Sure, man. Whatever you want.”

Dennis deflated a little but remained annoyed, and Charlie thought that maybe Dennis was possessive of Dee, because whether they hated each other or not, Dennis was the only person who had never abandoned her. He wouldn’t have let her work at the bar if he really hated her that much.

Just as Mac was cutting his last lemon the door to Paddy’s opened for the first time since they had arrived that morning, and Dee herself walked in, clad in a tiny, sequined black dress and stumbling in heels. A bearded man in a beanie was behind her, his hand glued to the small of her back, and they both looked all too pleased with themselves as they staggered in. Dee looked like she might’ve drank all the liquor in Philly, and her eyeliner and red lipstick were smeared

Charlie felt something like a gallon of ice water hit his stomach all at once, and when Dennis laughed uproariously he did not hear him, could only stare at that thick hand that would not move from Dee’s back. A shiny watch was also attached to it, and Charlie remembered how he had never owned a watch, and couldn’t tell time anyway, and since when did she like guys with beards?

The guy was also significantly taller than her. He looked strong, handsome. Charlie bit down on his tongue until he tasted blood.

“Dee, why are you bringing this ridiculous hipster man in here?” Dennis snorted, pouring whiskey into a shot glass in front of him.

“He’s m’new squeeze,” Dee drawled, latching onto said squeeze. “Len, this is my – ” Dee belched generously – “twin brother Dennis.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Len said, less drunk than Dee and clearly comfortable in the strange setting she had brought him to. A sleepy smile stretched across his face, and Charlie felt a violent urge take hold of him. He clenched his fists when he first saw what he imagined Dee’s night to be; he had been there with her before, he knew what it would’ve looked like. Felt like.

“Charlie?” Mac’s voice drew him back, and the switch had been flipped. A beaming, crazy smile appeared on Charlie’s face. Dee rolled her eyes up to Len’s face, her own crazy smile stretching across her face.

“Oh yeah, great! Len, fancy watch man, very good! Need to go…. Sewer now, bye!” Charlie turned on his heel and practically ran out the back door. He wondered how long it would take to find a bucket of paint and some cheap vodka, and if he would be able to get it in him fast enough. Len furrowed his thick brows at the strange display, but Dee put her hand on his face to distract him.

“That was weird,” Mac said, looking at the backdoor after it had closed. Behind him, Dee was giggling madly as Len kissed her neck. She picked up Charlie’s forgotten beer, radiant smile plastered to her face even though her eyes had been on Charlie’s back a moment before. Dennis’s glare from earlier had returned as he watched his sister mack on some random guy she had definitely just met. Something wasn’t right.

 

Charlie was a crier. He knew that about himself. And he knew that spending the $30 he had saved up in the past month to potentially take Dee on a nice date was very well spent on the half empty handle of Smirnoff shoved between his knees, worth so much more than the many pizza slices he could’ve purchased for her, and the fact that he had only cried for twenty minutes before he started drinking it made it all the better.

He didn’t understand anything. He never had. He sat through ten years of English classes without even knowing how to read, but that didn’t feel as bad as when Dee had walked into Paddy’s with some gross bearded guy named Len touching her back. He felt infinitely more stupid now than he did in school.

He took a long pull from the handle. He knew he’d fucked up. He wasn’t supposed to let things go back to normal again, it hadn’t felt right the first time. But Dennis and Mac were his friends too, and one of the first rules Dennis had ever told them was that no one was to fuck Dee, under any circumstances. And anyway, Dee hadn’t wanted to kiss him, not really. Why else would she be out fucking strange handsome men?

Charlie tried to close his eyes and remember the waitress’s beautiful eyes, but somehow, he couldn’t quite remember what they looked like. In fact, he couldn’t conjure up her face at all.

“What the fuck is happening to me,” he mumbled, dropping his face into his hands.

The alley behind his apartment wasn’t so bad, he decided. At least there were cats. He could stay there for a while, where Dee and Len wouldn’t find him. Eventually he would stand up and walk upstairs to see Frank, and pretend that nothing had happened. He would go back to work in the morning and laugh with the others about what a whore Dee was. That was the only ending to this story.

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Many hours later, Dee laid flat on her back on her bed, staring at the ceiling. She had just soaked in the bath for about two hours (she had actually refilled it when it became too cold, still feeling like the dirty whore she knew she was) and felt all too dehydrated and pruny. Her hangover made her head pound, vision swim, hands shake. She had already made herself throw up, but nothing was helping. She couldn’t eat, and drinking water seemed to only make the nausea worse.

The door to her bedroom was open. She stared out into the living room through the crack, and spotted her traitorous sofa, and remembered all the various scenes that had played out with Charlie in that exact spot. She remembered the different versions of themselves that had come to the surface and made them believe they had a shot at a different kind of life. 

Her stomach made an unpleasant sound. Dee closed her eyes, took a deep breath.

There was nothing to it. Happiness wasn’t something achievable, wasn’t something she really deserved. She would go back to work in the morning, and everything would be as fine as it had ever been. The boys would call her a whore, and she would pretend she didn’t agree with them. Really, that was the only ending she could come up with – she had dug her own grave long ago. That was the only ending to this story.


End file.
